The National Geographic Society is inviting you to participate in the Great Nature Project - a first-time attempt to capture and appreciate Earth's biodiversity.

The idea is to get as many people as possible to take photos of the plants and animals around them and share these pictures with the world.

South Africans will be able to participate in the Bioblitz via iSpot - a website that is aimed at helping anyone identify anything about nature - visit www.ispot.org.za.

Would you like to become involved in recording the world's diversity in a single week?

Together with experts and members of the public you can help to survey a natural area, seeking, identifying and recording as many species as possible. The National Geographic Society turns 125 years old this year, and to celebrate this, it is inviting the world to participate in the Great Nature Project - a first-time attempt to capture and appreciate Earth's biodiversity.

The week-long project will take the form of an International Bioblitz that runs from 21 to 29 September 2013.

The idea is to get as many people as possible to take photos of the plants and animals around them and share these pictures with the world by uploading them onto various social media platforms, which in turn will be posted on greatnatureproject.org. Visitors to the site can then learn more about the world's amazing diversity of life by engaging with educational and scientific resources on the site.

Furthermore, the project will attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the biggest online photo album of animals by collecting more than 100 000 animal images! Find out more

iSpot website

South Africans will be able to participate in this exciting event via iSpot - a website that is aimed at helping anyone identify anything about nature - visit www.ispot.org.za.

"On this site, people can upload their observations of nature, help each other identify them, and share and discuss what they've seen," says Stephen Cousins, an MSc student intern at the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI).

"If the images come in with coordinates and dates (some new digital cameras can embed this into images) and they are good enough to be able to identify the animals, then these can be catalogued into the SAIAB collections database," says Roger Bills, Collection Manager at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB). "For certain species this could improve our geographical coverage significantly and would be a great help to science."

Follow the link for an advanced notice about the International Bioblitz on iSpot. View details and ideas regarding Bioblitz events.

Last year, the Public Understanding of Biotechnology Programme (PUB), managed by SAASTA on behalf of the Department of Science and Technology, sponsored a similar exercise locally.